


Exit Wounds

by HectorRashbaum (FifteenDozenTimes)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-07
Updated: 2009-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-02 05:30:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FifteenDozenTimes/pseuds/HectorRashbaum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lifetime of love stories, but not a happily-ever-after to be found.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exit Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Greeks Bearing Gifts, To The Last Man, Reset, Dead Man Walking, Fragments, and Exit Wounds.

Aya was the first girl – first person – to break Tosh's heart, when they were just little. Tosh had tried to kiss Aya, and Aya had just laughed. Until she saw that Tosh wasn't laughing, hadn't been joking, and then she screwed up her face and said "that's disgusting".

When she got her heart broken for real, she almost laughed at the silliness of considering that "heartbreak". But silly as it might be, she always did, because it was her first.

\- - - - - -

At University, Tosh only dated men; it was best to reduce the number of ways in which she was different. All little flings, a few trips out for coffee, maybe dinner.

Except one, who kept calling, kept asking her out, stayed interested. He brought her flowers that she rolled her eyes at but inwardly loved, until he figured out the best way to win her heart was with books, and she was his; they started sleeping together not long before he graduated.

Years later, she was running some errands and ran into him. He smiled, and hugged her, and said it was a shame they'd lost touch. As if it were mutual.

\- - - - - -

Somewhere during the endless hours she spent curled up in a too-small too-filthy prison cell, Tosh figured out exactly what her problem was. Or, more accurately, she'd figured out the solution even if she couldn't articulate the problem exactly.

This wouldn't have happened, none of this, if Tosh had cared just a little less, if she didn't have this inability to think rationally when her feelings were involved. So, really, the solution was obvious – so obvious she felt a little guilty for not thinking of it sooner.

If she just stopped caring, she'd stop having this problem.

\- - - - - -

Toshiko Sato wasn't wired not to care. She'd always been solitary, preferring the company of a good book, good album, good meal, to the company of any person. But she couldn't just not get involved, especially not when Jack Harkness cut off the one outlet for all those (silly, problematic, damning) emotions without providing her another one.

All of a sudden, solitary became lonely, and it seemed her solution had done nothing but leave her with so much bottled up her ability to reason was compromised all the time, not just when she was in too deep with someone. Tosh was more open to manipulation than at any point in her life.

\- - - - - -

Mary had been everything Tosh wanted after years of pretending not to want, but nothing she needed. A great pretender, yes, and she expertly pretended to be necessary. Tosh would berate herself later, shame herself for not being able to see through the ruse, but after how many years of utter loneliness, of complete disconnection, who could really blame her for clinging so tightly to something that provided her with _so much_ to connect to?

Okay, so Owen could. But for someone whose job was to fix people, Owen had surprisingly little understanding for how they worked.

\- - - - - -

When it was all over, Tosh hated. Her whole body, every inch of her seethed, boiled with rage, and she was never quite sure who it was directed at. Jack, for forcing her into something like that, in the name of duty, of protecting the universe. She couldn't possibly have been the only one who could fix things, there had to have been another solution if anyone had bothered to look past the obvious.

And, ridiculously, she hated Tommy. She'd told him, hadn't she, it was a bad idea, they shouldn't, getting too involved could only end badly. Objection after objection after objection, and still he pushed.

Most of all, though, Tosh hated herself – for not fighting either one of them harder, for not meaning the objections. For putting herself, once again, in the same position time after time, that place where she was too open and too vulnerable.

She got over the first two long before she got over the last. Assuming she did get over the last; Tosh had a sneaking suspicion the hatred still lurked in that place where she shoved everything when the latest tragedy was over.

\- - - - - -

Owen Harper didn't make promises, didn't falsify himself, didn't push her or force her to object. Owen was unattainable because of nothing more than who and what he was, and the rational part of Tosh knew she only said she loved him because nothing about their relationship was subjective, there was no way to get confused about where the boundaries were or how either of them felt.

She was, in a way, disappointed when he agreed to go out with her; men she dated broke her heart. When he died he solved the problem, when he came back he did exactly what she _didn't_ love him for, and muddled things up so she was no longer sure where they stood.

It didn't even occur to Tosh things had always been muddled, that it was impossible for her to have seen the relationship (whatever it was) clearly, objectively, until she was lying in the autopsy bay feeling her life drain out through her stomach and there was an all-too-familiar ache in her chest.

"Because you're breaking my heart," she told him, and what really made her cry was knowing he would never understand what she meant by that.


End file.
